100 Poems to Break Your Heart

So, poetry.

“Dante conceived of it as a species of eloquence. Sir Philip Sidney called it “a speaking picture.” Coleridge characterized it as “the best words in the best order.” Robert Graves thought of it as “stored magic,” André Breton as a “room of marvels.” In our time, Joseph Brodsky described poetry as “accelerated thinking,” and Seamus Heaney called it “language in orbit.” And now we also know that poetry is something unsayable. Some essential part of it cannot be spoken. It is a human truth beyond words.”

“Poetry companions us.” In the introduction, author/poet/commentator Edward Hirsch acknowledges the role of poetry in our lives of walking beside us and leading us through our tough times. Hirsch goes on to say, “Implicit in poetry is the notion that we are deepened by heartbreaks, by the recognition and understanding of suffering—not just our own suffering but also the suffering of others. We are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish, or to let others vanish, without leaving a verbal record.”

That is this book. Hirsch shares poems that will crack you, snap you, rip you open, and then he, like a gentle and wise father walks us through the poems, and, in the process, we are deepened, and strengthened.